Johannesburg twice handed its mayoralty to a party that won less than 1% of the vote. With 547 parties and almost 137,000 candidates chasing 10,526 council seats on 4 November, Jaundiced Eye columnist William Saunderson-Meyer argued that most of those names were vanity projects or job-seekers, and that the big parties quietly benefited from the clutter. He told Alec Hogg why ActionSA's Herman Mashaba could end up a kingmaker but not a queenmaker in Joburg, how two party leaders reached powerful parliamentary posts on well under half a percent of the national vote, and why a cross next to a no-hoper might end up somewhere the voter never intended..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg (00:01) 547 parties, almost 137,000 candidates. Just 10,526 seats. On 4 November, South Africans will face the most crowded ballot in our history. William Saunderson-Meyer says most of those names are grit in the machine, vanity vehicles that trade their council votes like Pokémon cards.Johannesburg handed its mayoralty twice to a party that won less than 1% of the vote. So is a vote for the little guy a wasted vote? Or is that exactly what the big parties want you to believe? William, in his latest column, took on this issue, and my goodness, it stirred up a little bit of a hornet's nest. Good to have you on the BizNews platform, and here as well on BizNews TV. But I see... were you in a pub fight last night, with a gash under your nose?William Saunderson-Meyer (01:07) Well, I haven't been in a pub fight for a while. It looks a bit like I'm trying to grow a sort of Hitler moustache, which it isn't either. It's just two little stitches, which are in a very, very awkward place and look exceedingly odd.Alec Hogg (01:15) Yeah, it's done.Alec Hogg (01:24) But William, this is breast cancer month, so I've got a pink jersey on for most of the interviews this month. Next month is November, so maybe we will be growing those moustaches, perhaps not Hitler moustaches, but proper ones. Shall we give it a go?William Saunderson-Meyer (01:43) Indeed.Alec Hogg (01:44) Okay. Well, let's talk about the whole story that you covered this week, and we've heard this a lot from the bigger parties. It's interesting that you think in the same way that Helen Zille was explaining her position.William Saunderson-Meyer (02:04) You know, the bigger parties have some benefit out of these fragmented parties, in a perverse way. For instance, for the ANC, it has enabled it to avoid having to take responsibility, avoid having to take accountability, for its decline. There's an endless variety of new players that can be bought, or convinced, or handed positions of patronage that are very attractive to them. And that enables, for instance, the ANC to continue remaining the powerful force in a governing coalition, with the benefit of tiny parties that have virtually no electoral representation. So it's a kind of an inversion of the actual power pyramid.There's nothing wrong with a proportional representation system. I mean, the whole idea is to make it possible to have the widest range of opinions that actually exist represented in parliament. But the whole idea is not to create a situation where the entire governing structure becomes unbalanced and prone to sometimes malign influences.Alec Hogg (03:33) Indeed. And we'll get into those, especially in Johannesburg, in just a moment. But I had Jack Miller here in the studio yesterday. He is the head of the Cape Independence Party, or Cape Exit. His perception was: give us a chance. He said every election they've doubled the vote so far, every election they've participated in. So he's looking at 40,000 votes. He says maybe they'll go from two people in the City of Cape Town council to four people. So with these little guys, I suppose you have to decide who are ego projects and who might have a say in the future.William Saunderson-Meyer (04:18) Yes, absolutely, Alec. I'm not pointing a finger so much at small parties that represent very clear ideological positions for which there is support, and for which there is perhaps a growing market. But of these 547 parties that are contesting these positions on 4 November, very few of them actually have coherent programmes of any kind. They are mostly vanity projects, or in fact a way of seeking employment. So it's a nice job if you can get it.Alec Hogg (05:06) Sure. So if you go into politics for employment, that's got to be waving a red flag already. If I recall, Katharine Graham from the Washington Post has a wonderful autobiography, and in it she talks about her father, Eugene Meyer, the guy who bought the Washington Post when it was a tiny and almost broken newspaper. He was previously governor of the Fed in America.And he proposed throughout his life that 20 to 40 was learning, 40 to 60 was earning, and 60-plus was serving. That seems in many societies to have been the idea. But the way you've unpacked it, even 20 to 60 is no longer... if you're going into politics, that's open to you, and my goodness, it's actually where you earn a living. Why is South Africa so odd, such an about-face, in this regard?William Saunderson-Meyer (06:14) Well, we're a comparatively poor society. In a country where unemployment is as high as it is, and where work is as hard to come by as it is, politics, where you can perhaps coast into a position which has not only a salary and status but in many cases opens the door to tender fraud and corruption of various kinds, is an attractive proposition. It's one of the reasons why the ANC has these incredibly vicious internal battles, as people, literally hundreds over the past decade, assassinate one another in order to get their snouts in the trough.Alec Hogg (07:04) Yeah, that does put a different context on it. But how do you change things? Because it appears from what you've said that it really is democracy gone wrong.William Saunderson-Meyer (07:19) I think it is widely recognised that the proportional representation system that we have, for all its good intentions, needs adaptation. In fact, I think both the DA and the ANC at various stages have drafted possible legislation to deal with it. But that's a slow process. Given our president and his notorious lack of ability to reach any kind of decision, we'd probably have to have another commission of inquiry.But the solution is really simple. Don't vote for people who are no-hopers, or clearly chancers trying to game the system. In the metros especially, where the issues are stark, this is a crunch election. This is an election that is going to make an enormous difference to people's lives.After all, municipalities are the sharp end of government. That's where most citizens encounter and deal with what a government is supposed to do. Most people are not affected by whether we're cosying up to Cuba or being horrible to the Taiwanese. What most people are affected by is whether they've got running water, whether the potholes are filled, whether electricity and water connections reach that last mile, all the things that local government provides. That is where people experience government. Johannesburg is not the only metro that is on its last legs. It has had the most attention because it's the key city economically, but Tshwane is not in a great situation.Durban's not in a great situation. Nelson Mandela Bay... all the big metros are in trouble. And that is where people's lives are being desperately affected. So if you are in those metros, you really need to think very carefully: what are the results of my vote? Because you're not only voting for your ward councillor. You have two votes at a municipal election [in the metros]: one is a proportional representation vote and one is a ward councillor vote.William Saunderson-Meyer (09:43) So for every vote that you are placing with someone who is not going to have any effect on the day-to-day running of government, except possibly to be the grit within that machinery of government, rather give it to the ANC. Put your money where your mouth is, give it to the ANC. Or if you don't want that result, which has been well tested, vote for the DA, or vote for a party where you have an idea of how they are going to behave in the coalitions that are, without a doubt, going to come into being after 4 November.Alec Hogg (10:27) ActionSA, in The Common Sense this morning, has been flagged as the kingmaker, especially in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane. Going into the last election, ActionSA said they would never ever vote with the DA, never do business with the DA. Well, that didn't last very long. So how do you see ActionSA's influence, if the polls are right, in those three incredibly important metros into the future? Might they this time stay with the original promise, or... you know the politicians better than we do, William.William Saunderson-Meyer (11:09) Well, the antipathy between Herman Mashaba and the DA is palpable. It's almost pathological, the enormous degree of loathing that he has for the DA, and which is carried through his party. Firstly, it would be a real change of mind on his part, which would be a bit embarrassing. But I mean, politicians have an endless capacity for embarrassment, so let's not worry about that. I just don't see in the long run how he could work with the DA, and how the DA would trust him to enter into an alliance. So yes, I think he will be a kingmaker, but certainly in Johannesburg, I don't think he's going to be a queenmaker.I think however Helen Zille limps to the finishing line, if she manages to do so, it would be despite ActionSA. And again, I think it's a really good example, because if you are contemplating voting for ActionSA, you need to think: where is that vote going to go in the end? One must at least take Mashaba at face value. If he says ActionSA will never be part of a DA coalition, well then you know that whatever coalition happens with ActionSA's assistance, not only in Johannesburg but in other municipalities, in other metros, will be a cobbled-together thing with maybe MK, maybe the EFF.Maybe the ANC. And then quite frankly, if you're happy with that situation, why the hell not just vote for the ANC or the EFF or MK? Why use an intermediary?Alec Hogg (13:09) Yeah.Alec Hogg (13:13) Joburg is a good story, though, and you wrote about it a lot in this week's column. Al Jama-ah: tell us that insight. And might we see a repeat after 4 November?William Saunderson-Meyer (13:30) Yes, Al Jama-ah has been the useful idiot for the ANC and the EFF, by parlaying a party that got 0.85% of the vote, less than a percent of the voters, into twice holding the mayoralty of Johannesburg. It's one of the most blatant, but it's by no means the only, example of how a big power bloc like the ANC can use the smaller parties to retain power.Alec Hogg (14:17) If we go back to Mashaba now: if he continues with the current coalition, and if he gets the 20-odd percent that is being suggested, he'd be the biggest other than the DA. With the current coalition, just bringing those guys together, he would very comfortably be able to be the mayor of Johannesburg. And I suppose in that instance, what would today's voters be voting for?William Saunderson-Meyer (14:47) Well, I don't know. They don't know. He has been erratic in the past. He's erratic, angry, and sometimes extremely intemperate in the way he deals with the world. I don't think he's going to change. I'm interested in the figure that you use of 20%. I haven't seen the polling giving him anything like that. Most of the polling that I've seen is around 10% of the vote, but with a margin there, let's say it goes up to 12%. Twenty percent of the vote seems really unlikely to me.But I don't think he needs 20% to become the mayor of Johannesburg. All he needs is to do a deal with whatever coalition is going to give him the mayoralty of Johannesburg. He cannot possibly win it on his own. He can only do it by leveraging the votes that he has. In other words, he can parlay power for possession, for prestige.Alec Hogg (16:07) Sorry, William, the 20% was to do with... and I think it came out at about 25% on a recent poll by MarkData and eNCA, where they asked who would you like to be mayor of Joburg. Zille came first, in the thirties, then came Mashaba, which was quite a surprise. And I guess that does give him a bit of a bargaining chip when he talks to the ANC, EFF or whoever he might be playing with after the election.William Saunderson-Meyer (16:26) Yes.Alec Hogg (16:36) It is something that I guess a lot of people will be interested in. But take yourself into a voting booth in Johannesburg, where the voter has got 75 parties to pick from. Is there a quick test that voter can do before they put their cross next to one of them?William Saunderson-Meyer (16:55) Yes. They could check whether their brains are operating. No, there isn't. I think you should not be making a decision about whom you're voting for when you're entering a polling booth. You should have made that decision beforehand. And I think the proliferation of parties that start with an "A" is an indication of an assumption on the part of many of those parties that as long as they have that "A" somewhere near the top, where people start reading, there's a chance of picking up a vote. And I'm sure they're right. I think you need to know beforehand. But I think the other part of it, Alec, is that people need to vote.Turnouts are notoriously low in local government elections, and this is a really important one. So there's no point in whingeing in a month's time that nothing is happening and nothing has changed unless you vote. So you have to vote. And really, the thrust of our columns is: not only do you have to vote, which is the basic duty of every citizen, especially at a time when our country is in such a miserable state, but aside from that, you need to exercise that vote with a modicum of intelligence. And voting for no-hope parties who have no clear ideological position and are really in there just to do a deal is not only a complete waste of the vote, it's a perversion of democracy. It's a perversion of what the whole electoral system that we've set up in this country intended.Alec Hogg (18:48) You propose that there should be a 5% threshold. Just explain that, and why at the moment the bill before parliament has a threshold of 1%. What's all this threshold stuff?William Saunderson-Meyer (19:03) Well, I don't have any religious convictions about 5%. The concept of a threshold exists in order to avoid exactly that, the Al Jama-ah example. Okay, Al Jama-ah has 0.85%, so they might even have squeaked in. But let's take Maimane or Songezo Zibi, who both got into parliament. It's the same principle. They both got in with 0.45% of the vote. Zibi spent, I can't remember, R60 million. Maimane spent R21 million. Those are accounted-for figures, in other words donations that had to be declared because they were in the region of R100,000 or more over the year. They probably spent considerably more than that, because it doesn't include crowd contributions or individual donations. So you have people spending an enormous amount of money and not getting a lot of votes, 0.45% of the votes. Maimane, for his R21 million, got 60,000 votes, and Songezo Zibi spent three times that and got, I think, an extra 20,000 votes or something out of it. Anyway, so here you have people with very low electoral support who are now sitting in extremely powerful positions. One runs Scopa, the parliamentary committee which oversees public finances, and the other one chairs the appropriations committee [Standing Committee on Appropriations] in Parliament. And what any of these minimum vote requirements seeks to do, no matter where you pitch it, is to ensure that legitimate interests are reflected in parliament.William Saunderson-Meyer (21:28) But you don't want every crank who can cobble together sufficient money and publicity to be part of the political game. So it's an attempt to set a barrier. A 1% barrier is absolutely minimal. It would exclude some of the problems, some of the vanity parties. And I think whatever the minimum threshold is, it needs to be tied to a financial cost if you fail to reach that number. So if you don't make 1% or 2% or 4% or 5%, there is a penalty attached. You lose your deposit. So when you enter the political game, you're saying: I believe that there is support for my ideas, and I'm willing to risk not only my time and attention and effort, but also a financial stake in the whole process.Alec Hogg (22:37) William, I'm from the world, as you know, of business and investments, and to me this is very confusing, because, going back to Eugene Meyer's philosophy of serving, I've always thought that those who govern us are there to serve us. They serve the people. But from everything that we've discussed today, it looks like a business. It looks like a bit of a hustle that's going on here in politics. You can buy your way into parliament, and then, if you are smart enough and you have the talent, and both Maimane and Zibi do, you quickly rise to a position of great influence, as they both have. Am I being a little cynical?William Saunderson-Meyer (23:12) Yes.William Saunderson-Meyer (23:21) No, I don't think you're being cynical. I think that describes it absolutely. It doesn't matter how you structure political systems, they are open to some form of gaming or exploitation or manipulation. Your best guarantee of democracy in any society is an informed electorate that knows what it wants, actually votes for it, and monitors the people that it's voted for. You need active, involved citizens.Alec Hogg (23:56) William, sorry.Yeah. And we're going to be talking again next week, probably on a similar theme, because it's very close to the election now, a couple of weeks to go. William Saunderson-Meyer is the author of the Jaundiced Eye, and you will find his latest column, which covers all of the issues we discussed today in great depth, on biznews.com. I'm Alec Hogg for BizNews Edge.